Calgary’s comic book-friendly Zero Issue Brewing have provided us with a Kölsch, which sports a kind of a space western sort of label motif, like Firefly or something.

This 473ml can pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly fizzy off-white head, which leaves a bit of low-lying streaky and filmy lace around the glass as it quickly dissipates.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, some apple and pear fruitiness, a damp minerality, some gently estery yeastiness, and plain leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters.  The taste is grainy and crackery pale malt, muddled pome fruity notes, a tame stoney flintiness, still laid-back yeast, and more understated earthy, leafy, and musky floral hoppiness.  The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-stroking frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a pleasant experience at this particular juncture.  It finishes trending dry, the malt losing a bit of steam, as the other characters evaporate entirely.

Overall – this is a pretty representative version of the style, nice and crisp and eminently quaffable, especially at the session-friendly 4.6% ABV.  Worth checking out, even if you need Google to verify any intended meaning behind the marketing imagery on this offering.